Ecommerce event backed by Thai government

Posted on October 2, 2013.

Raising consumer trust levels and boosting online shopping in Thailand is the key aim of a new event backed by the Thai government, reports warc.com.

The Thailand Online Mega Sale will start at the end of November and offer discounts of up to 80 per cent on products and services bought digitally. The sale, which will run for around a week, is expected to generate sales of more than 500 million baht for more than 500 websites, adds bangkokpost.com.

It is thought the sale will promote ecommerce (and the process of making an online payment to businesses), with current digital shoppers making up only 10 per cent of 25 million internet users in Thailand.

Chaichana Mitrpant, assistant executive director of the Electronic Transactions Development Agency, admits the agency plans to establish an online consumer protection centre as an additional boost to ecommerce takeup in the region.

In addition mobile will also play an increasingly larger role in ecommerce in the long-term, as indicated by the findings of a MasterCard survey of the Asia-Pacific region.

According to the survey, the lowest proportion of interviewees who made a purchase using their phone was lowest in Australia and New Zealand (18.7 per cent and 18.2 per cent respectively) while interviewees from Indonesia, China and Thailand all registered over 50 per cent.